VMware says operation not allowed while powering on VM.

[johnabraham]

Hi friends

when i am trying to power on a VM (RHEL5 Guest OS) on ESXi5.1 Host, it is prompting me the error like below:

i've installed the vCenter Server in my VMware workstation 9, all the VMware related services are running & sometimes the VM gets powered on & sometimes it cannot. so when i revert back to the working snapshot it works fine. every time when this error comes, i revert back to working snapshot, so it works but this is annoying doing this every time.

can anyone tell me how can i troubleshoot it?

thanks!

[schepp · Accepted solution]

Hi,

this might happen when the connection between the ESXi host and the vCenter server is faulty.

Take a look at the host. Does it tell you how much CPU and RAM ressources are allocated? If not restart the ESXi management Agent: VMware KB:    Restarting the Management agents on an ESXi or ESX host 

(It can also be done by connection to the ESXi host with ssh and type "dcui" to get the GUI prompt of the terminal session. Quit with with ctrl+c)

Else you should try and restart the vCenter Server service on your vCenter Server.

Regards

[zXi_Gamer]

Most probable reason might be the host is put under maintenance mode or is to be scheduled under maintenance mode. During maintenance mode, any vm operations is not allowed.

Run this command and let me know:

vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit

Also, check for vmware.log when you are trying to power on the vm

[johnabraham]

Hi

In my host, the Resource Allocation tab:

CPU                                                            Memory

Total Capacity:             21833MHz           Total Capacity:              29024MB

Reserved Capacity:    0MHz                     Reserved Capacity:     0MB

Available Capacity:     21833MHz            Available Capacity:    29024MB

i've restarted the management agents in dcui through ssh, then the VM got powered on, but i am struck in that dcui. its not closing even in ctrls+x or Esc.

is there any impact when we do a management agent restart in the production? if we have impact on production then what should be done?

thanks!

[john23]

If you restart management agent, following can happen:

- Server loss the connectivity from vSphere center server for  a time being, it will connect soon.

- If you loss datastore (All path down condition), Restart management service it may hang as well.

Ideally you should restart management service in production with calculative risk, Since service will not come up then ESX host will lose connectivity to vSphere center as well client.

-A

[johnabraham]

thanks for your kind information!

[schepp]

I'm sorry John, had a typo in the haste. You quit dcui with ctrl+c

Restarting Management Agent has no impact on running VMs on that server, I had to do it several times on productive ESXi servers with running VMs on it.

Regards

[johnabraham]

Hi

i got the same error again and this time i applied your suggestion but getting another error as below:

so what is the problem here. i hope i am using a workstation hardware & this is not VMware supported hardware. thats why i get this problem always.

can you please tell me how can i analyze the vmware.log file. what is the absolute path for that plz tell me.

thanks!

[zXi_Gamer]

The error message you are getting should be fine since the host is not in maintenance mode. For vmware.log, you can check in the vm directoy. For example, /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/VM/vmware.log

Also, check on /var/log/hostd.log when you are performing the power operation on the VM